Killarney Valley AC are a club that have to fight more than most to be heard in the local club landscape, thanks to County Kerry’s strong pedigree in football
The club’s sprint coach Tomas Griffin says they are using unique ways to capture their community’s imagination and promote athletics in a GAA-heavy landscape.
Last month the Killarney-based club hosted a unique exhibition event where a female club sprinter raced a male football player. The sprints coach explained this was done to try and stand out.
“There’s more than one sport basically, is the message that we’re trying to deliver,” Griffin told Athletics Ireland.
“We continuously have to be marketing ourselves, otherwise we become irrelevant quite simply because of the growing nature of publicity and coverage that both male and female Gaelic football are getting on our turf.”
The ex-Kerry underage player also revealed the club has more plans to engage with footballers and other sportspeople in Killarney, with a “Speed Club” showdown planned for the autumn and winter.
“We want to put together a winter-spring league where we’ll invite in any GAA player to come in and race other GAA people over 60 meters and do the same for other sports.
“So then, to establish the true fastest, we will have the best in each sport come together to race it out.
“And then maybe we’ll have sparked a passion and a bit of an addiction, which exists in our sport.”
It’s not just other sports KVAC are trying to engage with; the club also supports talented members with travel expenses.
The athlete support programme was launched in May this year with an aim of supporting more athletes in making it to international senior ranks by reducing the financial barriers of travelling for competition.
“We didn’t want a barrier of lack of finance… So we basically decided we set aside from our club resources, a chunk of money every year.
“They went to races as far away as Boston, Spain, Belfast, uh, all sorts of places.”
The club built a track at St Brendan’s College, which was completed almost five years ago, and Griffin detailed that since the facilities have been completed, more athletes are competing in the senior ranks.
This has presented a new challenge for the club, which Griffin hopes is remedied by the support programme.
“There are loads of national champions under 12 and under 13, but really, are we making a difference? Are you making a difference when you don’t have people of older ages? So yeah, we saw that transformation.”
KVAC athletes and coaches pictured at the launch of the Athlete Support Programme
While the club has a pedigree in middle distance and sprints, Griffin explains that they are looking to build more in the field events and have targeted one in particular and are building facilities to accommodate training.
“Pole vault was something that we identified as an opportunity because gymnastics is very strong in our terrain. Lots of kids in the club do gymnastics, it’s a great marrying up between sprints, jumps and gymnastics so pole vault became a thing.
“We currently have 15 pole vaulters in the club. Some of them have won national medals, but they’ve been traveling as far as Cork to train in Lee Vale’s indoor facility, which is great.
“We’re about 85% finished at this stage… We’re just hoping we get a break in the weather now to get it finished.”
“One of the things that we would regularly say is a few of us in the club who are really, really passionate about it is we're fuelled by regret.
Another focus will be the streets of Killarney 5-mile road race next April. Now in its third year, Griffin explained it was noticed that in general, the road racing scene wasn’t giving back to local clubs,
“What motivated us for that is a lot of the commercial road races around the place. We’re not giving money back to the sport.
“We need to take our sport back and the streets of Killarney was born.”
Griffin revealed one thing that he and other coaches in the club are fuelled by: regret, something they are hoping to minimise for the current generation.
“One of the things that we would regularly say is a few of us in the club who are really, really passionate about it is we’re fuelled by regret.
“Facilities didn’t exist, and coaching locally to the level that we’ve managed to bring it to didn’t exist.
“Now we’ve managed to do that. And what fuels us is if there’s talent there, we just don’t want to have an excuse to say they didn’t make it because of those things.
“Regret… It’s one of the most powerful emotions and I can see it in so many of the coaches that are helping out.”
Youtube video credit: Photography and Design by Molly
